There are four CDs' worth but it's enormously rewarding, like mid-period Miles Davis playing Ligeti.

Interesting to see that a few of the unused songs from the period (1978) push the released material for quality.

Stapleton's writing for this recording, satisfies on every level.

"I wanted", Ocean wrote, "to create worlds that were rosier than mine. I tried to channel overwhelming emotions." Mission accomplished, and then some.

This may well be Henriksen’s most approachable album--certainly for people coming to him for the first time--and even the semi-commercial breakthrough he deserves. It is also absolutely sublime.

It starts nervily and there's some creative recycling of motifs, but once he builds up a head of steam the force is truly with him.

The end result is a tense, powerful and emotive piece of work.

Annie Clark’s fourth album is frequently extraordinary.

This is a band for fans of Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker and Nick Cave who wondered where their next great love was coming from...it's already here.

A good “deluxe” remaster job will do at least two things: one, it’ll strip away centuries of digital compression and make the music sound as if you’ve never heard it properly before; two, it’ll include additional material that gives insight into how the finished work was shaped. Moondance delivers on both counts.

Porter has made the best vocal album in an age.

Bad As Me is as good as it gets.

Simon Green, aka Bonobo, has created a beguiling and compelling narrative.

This one's a beauty.

Buckinghamshire band SBP return for their third album with a far more complex musical palette.

What comes across most is the sheer unbridled enthusiasm expressed in the complex, racing rhythms, squalling sax solos, twanging electric guitar and crooning vocals.

MBV leaves all other post-rock experimentalists looking like trivial dilettantes. If jet engines could sing, these would be their hymns.

Their 12th album covers all points from brutality to beauty in pursuit of epiphanies.

It's an album which makes you feel warm.

Rokia rocks, and it's a fine and bracing thing to hear.

It's an album about what war does to the aggressor, as much as what it does to the vanquished victim.

Catchy yet abrasive, noisy yet intimate, kind of funny yet also kind of scary, this is post-pop at its most vertiginously original.

Her self-produced fourth album executes another dramatic confidence leap.

The mood of uplifting-melancholia survives and this time out Vernon needs no dramatic backstory. Clearly, his is a talent that loves company as much as it loves misery.

Marvellous.

Everything is great.

All of this adds up to something very special indeed.

For once all that languorous muck is refreshing.

It's close to the best of all music I know.... A second CD of later, unreleased material with some genuine gold among the dross.

They're back now, all troubles set aside, and the results are good.

A fascinating collection of songs from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Over 13 tunes, Akinmusire and his very hot quintet (featuring Walter Smith III on tenor sax and a great drummer, Justin Brown) take the basic format of post-bop straightahead jazz and tease it around with absolute authority.

14 songs of keening, romantic acoustic music of great seriousness and lightness of being.

To the relief of anyone who carries a torch for the reclusive genius, it's a beauty.

The worldy influence remains but never overwhelms and the album contains at least half a dozen songs that are as simple and profound as anything Simon has ever written.

The wisdom expressed is crusty but benign, poetic and sometimes witty.

Helpnessness Blues is, like its predecessor, archaic and pastoral to the last.

An undiscovered diamond.

Arrangements are simple, bluegrass-inflected and rich in acoustic textures. Warm and thick as a hayrick.

The Cumbrian quartet haven't fumbled the ball with the follow-up. Smother, recorded in the shadow of Snowdonia, tinkles and twinkles like the classiest adult-alternative pop of the 1980s.

A compelling experience.

A genuine classic, in fact.

The material is all Mehldau's and quality varies from the standing ovations of the opening and closing tunes to lesser tricked-up vamps, but bass and drums groove superbly throughout.

There is joy in these grooves; the attentive care of studio perfectionists, and the warm embrace of an old friend.

It's a brilliant record; probably her best.

It's his best group for eons.

Maybe now he can sleep a little less on floors and spend more time making gorgeous albums like this. Please.

The occasional off-kilter touch throws things sufficiently askew to deny listeners any complacency.

Parker's music is approached from a post-Coltrane, post-free jazz aesthetic, with the rhythmic edginess of bebop elided into an all-the-time-in-the-world fluidity. A masterpiece.

Though it's far from his worst album, it's his least commercial – with its harsh beats, mangled vocals, and Marilyn Manson samples, it mimics the aesthetics of a DIY mixtape.

This rocks harder and faster than those fellow Tuareg bluesmen, partly due to the noticeable pop influence of another Malian act, Amadou & Mariam.

Meta-pop doesn’t come much more moving than this.

It happens to be their most cohesive and convincing effort yet.

Too late for those album of the year polls?

Though his appeal remains frustratingly specialist, with each release it becomes clearer that Callahan is the natural successor to Leonard Cohen.

This is accessible, song-based contemporary jazz at its most earnest, ordered and empowering.

This is Cash at his rawest and most riveting, singing his soul out to platoons, prisoners and presidents alike. Hard to describe in terms that are adequate.

Thankfully, the Knife have remained true to their essential principles.

While there's perhaps a surfeit of synth-washes, the beautiful "Winter Elegy" superbly fulfils the opening promise.

This is smooth jazz raised to a high art.

It's a clever, sensitive record.

One moment--the Jason Molina tribute “JM”--is startling enough to forgive the clunking stadium-grunge workouts that seem, conversely, to be bringing Strand of Oaks to wider attention.

King Lear probably sounded like this after a couple of days on the heath.

Blunderbuss does, at times approach his finest work. But it doesn't do anything he hasn't already done.

A welcome addition to the Beastie canon, and if it gets them back out on the road, it'll be an absolutely precious one.

This is one of the most exhilarating albums of the year.

This is an album that's ostentatiously overloaded on melody, and on all-round sonic luxury. This is the one.

An album which should win prizes (but won't), and hearts (and will).

The weird, aquatic-sounding requiems are getting better all the time.

Delicious.

Fear Fun is the kind of album that can name-check Sartre, Heidegger and Neil Young in the same song.

It’s business as usual, only with a lusher production than expected and a tad too much emphasis on Western rock’s tired tropes in some of the licks.

The Manics’ band identity proves robust enough to withstand the tweaking.

It may not be the best Wilco album ever, but with care and consideration it may well turn out to be your favourite.

The vibe is convivial. And though the great man can't put his cancer-strangled voice to every number, he can still swing the nuts off a Slingerland kit in between chesting a nifty mandolin.

Bar that electric guitar, this is the kind of music that you wouldn’t be surprised to hear on an old piece of 78rpm vinyl rescued from a car-boot sale (which is, of course, meant as a compliment).

Expect more straightforward, big-vocal, soul-funk numbers, and fewer immediate hits. But compared with most R&B records, Monae is still lightyears ahead.

The band return to the slow-and-low, sinister alt-boogie that made their name, with Homme's satisfying dirty badass guitar sound in full effect.

Commendably, the Bury band's fifth album doesn't see them chasing the mainstream or pandering to the ear of the daytime radio dilettante.

Watson packaged up the month that he spent riding the train, using his original recordings, adding his own narration, throwing in some interviews, and creating something magical.

The overall theme is utopia defiled. Until, that is, Deacon – ever the optimist – brings it all together on "Manifest", the big rapturous finale.

In every sense, Theatre Is Evil sounds like a million dollars.

It's that rare thing: an album that will reward repeated listening by drip-feeding you its secrets.

We get grooves as smooth and tight as Lycra, funky stabs of brass and arch lyrics delivered with cool detachment.

Words and Music, the first full studio album in an aeon from Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, is a masterclass of pop theory and practice in perfect harmony.

The occasional familiar, Carpenters-esque track aside, it makes for an exhilarating musical progression--even as his lyrical style remains unchanged.

Charges of over-solemnity may be levelled its way, but only occasionally are the melodic and narrative threads lost to a focus on miasmic, brush-stroked atmospherics.

A potent shot in the arm for Afrobeat.

As with some diseases, the album gets worse before it gets better, but by the end you're left stunned in admiration. Hell, there's even a redemptive arc. Amazing.

ODIGTS is the soul album of the century. It might yet turn out to be the album of the year

Post-millennial indie boy-rock has taken a savage beating here. And it may prove the best it’s ever had.

It's a little too polished for the Oh Brother... crowd, but fans of Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss should take note.

The orchestra's work is subtle and supportive rather than flashy, allowing free rein to that astonishing voice.

The songs are sparky and Cherry is in excellent voice as she raps, sings and swings against the sparse, drum and bass-style backing orchestrated by Four Tet.

David Bowie's perpetual predicament is that he can't escape David Bowie's past. In that respect, he's just like the rest of us: we can't escape David Bowie's past either. The Next Day leaves you wondering why you'd ever want to.

The intricate interweaving of guitar and ngoni juxtaposed with the bright, clear backing vocals makes for a sound that’s dynamic and assertive.

A sassy self-overhaul, AM issues lubricious R&B come-ons over a self-assured narrative arc with personality and open potential cannily spliced.

The fourth album from the award-winning strings-and-sisters folksters is a thing of shivery and spooky charms.